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EMOTIONRESEARCH

A Buyer’s Guide to

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CONTENTSTable of

1 Introduction

2 Seamless Emotion Intelligence

3 Simple Emotion Intelligence

4 Scalable Emotion Intelligence

5 Scientific Emotion Intelligence

6 Conclusion

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Emotion research is a growing trend – a simple Google search for

the term reveals thousands of hits extolling the

virtues of emotion analysis.

With so many options, which direction should you take your

emotion research? Who can help you?

There are four aspects to consider when selecting a market

research firm that focuses on emotion research. You need a

solution that is:

1. Seamless

2. Simple

3. Scalable

4. Scientific

A Practical Approach to

Emotion Research

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SEAMLESS

For any research, the process should integrate smoothly with your

existing methodologies. You don’t want to completely change the

direction of your research docket – it’s better to have a solution that

simply plugs in to the work you’re already doing. Whether your

process is qualitative, quantitative, online or in person, don’t

replace it – look for a way to supplement it.

SIMPLE

The simpler, the better when it comes to emotion research. You

need a way to study emotions in customers that is cost-effective

and efficient – while still being scientific and proven. If the research

process is complex and prolonged, you’ll be frustrated with a lack

of progress and miss out on valuable time to act on the research

findings. And the findings shouldn’t need a scientist to explain.

No matter what kind of research you are doing, the process should be able to integrate smoothly

with your existing methodologies. “ “

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SCALABLE

Scalability is one of the primary disqualifiers of market research

companies studying emotion – their process involves techniques

that work at a small scale but aren’t able to meet the needs of large

companies.

When emotion research is approached from a neuroscience angle,

it often involves costly machines and other time-consuming

elements. If the research process for one subject costs $2,000, the

cost of reaching hundreds or thousands for a large-scale study is

crippling.

SCIENTIFIC

Most emotion research methods

involve neuroscientists doing market

research. This has a number of “fish

out of water” challenges, because the

business environment is so different

from the science environment.

What you really need is a market

research company using

neuroscience to research emotions.

Market research companies are in

sync with the processes and pace of

business, and build the research

process (using science tools) to meet

the needs of businesses.

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So what does the right

Emotion Research look like?

The solution that fits best with these 4 criteria is a

language-based study of emotions. Basing an emotion study in

language allows you to cut out the need for expensive machines

and uncomfortable environments, but still gets to the heart of

customers’ true feelings.

Research has proven that a person’s word choice reveals non-

conscious emotions that reflect their true feelings toward a brand.

By asking open-ended questions, we’re able to uncover actionable

brand insights that tap into the power of emotion.

We use tools such as patented linguistic algorithms and Martec

Emotion Score (MES) to uncover these non-conscious emotions

and categorize them in a way that is easy to understand and

analyze.

A person’s word choice reveals non-conscious emotions that reflect their true feelings toward a brand

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EMOTION RESEARCHSEAMLESSSection One

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Supplement your existing processes, don’t replace them!

Emotion research should integrate with your

current projects. It’s far easier to supplement your

existing process with new techniques than to scrap

everything and start from scratch. There is an approach that’s

non-invasive and doesn’t require a lot of effort or a complete

overhaul of your research process.

The key is to use language.

Because language is ubiquitous, it is an ideal raw material for

emotion research. Language can be integrated with virtually any

existing research technique, be it qualitative or quantitative. And

language-based results are easier to understand, so that your

marketing & communications team can begin using the insights

immediately.

Our Emotion Intelligence techniques don’t require you to replace

your existing partners or scrap your existing plans – you simply

plug us in to the brand-tracking, needs-based segmentation, and

other research you’re already doing.

The simple addition of our language analysis tool is a low-risk

option for market researchers who want to understand their

customers’ emotions better.

How to begin

your emotion market research

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There are 3 ways to use emotion research to work

with you:

1. The simplest way is to take your data from a completed or

ongoing research project. The data can be used analyzed

using algorithms for emotion detection. What you’ll get back is

actionable insights into customer emotions, with little-to-no effort

on your part.

2. The next level of engagement is to get advice on

enhancements you can do to your ongoing research. This

could be as simple as tweaking the way you’re already asking

questions, or maybe suggesting new questions to add to a

discussion guide or other survey instrument you’re using.

3. The most comprehensive way of using emotion research is to

have a research group run the entire research process. If you

don’t have the time or resources to do the research internally,

the firm can take over the process for you and produce the

insights into emotion that you need.

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EMOTION RESEARCHSIMPLESection Two

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A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research

Don’t over-engineer your emotion research!

When it comes to market research, it seems that every day there is

a new technique for gaining an understanding of your customers.

Emotion research, however, may just claim the title for most

fragmented; nearly every market research company approaches

the study of emotions differently. You can find hundreds of

companies with complicated techniques for uncovering the

emotions of consumers, when all you really want is a simple

solution that provides your company actionable insights with a

limited amount of time and effort.

But what does a simple solution look like, exactly? It focuses

on two areas: the research process, and the end results.

A Simple Approach

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A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research

As opposed to physiological approaches, language-based analysis

can be done with nearly any type of research process that you may

already have in place. Focus group research? Simple. Just add in

some specifically-worded discussion topics. Surveys? No problem.

Just plug-in a couple specific questions that will elicit more (and

better) open-ended responses, and you’ll get the data needed to

analyze respondents’ emotions. There are even options for

analyzing the data you already have available from past market

research – with the right team, emotion can be pulled from that as

well.

You now

have options

that are

simple and

straightforw

ard enough

to be

completed in

a few weeks,

rather than

months

A frequent concern we hear from clients

interested in doing emotion research is whether

the process will be time-consuming and

difficult. The assumption is that such research

must require fieldwork that is invasive and

costly, requiring a complex apparatus or

unusual techniques, and that collecting and

analyzing that data implies the need for

specialized scientists who exclusively study

human emotions. This doesn’t have to be the

case.

With advancing technologies and techniques in

emotion research, you now have options that

are simple and straightforward enough to be

completed in a few weeks, rather than months.

There are solutions that focus on analyzing

more accessible data such as language, which

simplifies the fieldwork immensely.

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A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research

You need results that are straightforward

enough to understand and act upon, not

abstract ideas that leave you wondering

what to do next. With the right approach,

you shouldn’t need a scientist in the room

with you just to explain what all the charts

and data mean. Ideally, the research

findings should easily lead to real-world

solutions, such as improved marketing

communications, better segmentation, or

better-targeted product development.

For example, imagine you work for a

company that sells monthly subscription

boxes, such as Birchbox or Dollar Shave

Club. Say you wanted to know what you

could do to better connect with your

customers emotionally. If you hired

someone to do emotion research for your

company and they came back with massive

amounts of raw data that had to be

explained by a PhD statistician or

neuroscientist, and in the end only proved

the majority of your current customers felt

pleasant emotions toward your brand –

what would you do with that data? How

would you turn that information into a

strategy for improving your emotional

connection with customers?

You

shouldn’t

need a

scientist

in the

room

with you

just to

explain

what all

the

charts

and data

mean

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A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research

Now imagine the same scenario, but this time you hire a company

to do emotion research that returns with a brief, clear presentation

of the findings in business language. You read it and find that

millennial females living in urban areas express strong feelings of

security and contentment regarding your monthly subscription

boxes. Meanwhile, males aged 55+ living in rural areas express

high levels of contempt, yet also reveal feelings of joy regarding

your product. Using this information, you can adjust your

communications focus for each group and forge stronger emotional

connections with your customers.

Approaching emotion research through language analysis

will not only ensure the fieldwork process is quick and easy,

but will produce results that are relevant, specific, and

valuable. That is what makes for a simple emotion research

project that results in actionable insights.

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EMOTION RESEARCHSCALABLESection Three

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A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research

Breaking through the myths surrounding emotion research

Emotion research is not scalable when it is

based in a lab setting with high-tech

machines and neuroscientists who

specialize in human emotions.

On the other hand, it is scalable when analyzing language to

understand customer emotions.

Perhaps the most significant advantage of using language to do

emotion research is the scalability it allows. Most emotion research

techniques are small sample and cannot be done in large scale

due to the cost and complexity of the work. If you need to increase

your sample size, using language analysis to discover and

understand customer emotions is the best option.

A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research

How to do

large-sample emotion research

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A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research

For example, imagine you are conducting a survey on the food and

beverage industry in which your company wants to determine

whether its current marketing tactics are truly resonating with

potential customers.

You begin with the small scale, exploratory phase, but you know

you need a larger sample to get a clearer picture of customer

emotions. If neuro-based emotion research methods cost your

company $1,000 per participant to conduct, the idea of scaling up

is completely cost-prohibitive and you won’t be able to accomplish

your goals within budget.

In this instance, you are better off performing emotion research

through language analysis. Because language is ubiquitous, the

cost to conduct studies is much lower and the timeline is much

faster.

No matter what kind of research you are conducting – quantitative,

qualitative, focus group work, surveys, etc. – it can easily be scaled

up to accommodate a larger sample size. Unlike other emotion

research methods that are primarily physiological, language

analysis is easy to accomplish with techniques that are conducive

to large sample work.

The larger your sample, the more confident you can be in your

results. The more confident you are in your results, the better your

business decisions. It’s a win-win.

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EMOTION RESEARCHSCIENTIFICSection Four

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A SEAMLESS APPROACH to Emotion Research Emotion research is becoming more popular,

but there are many arguments about the

“best” or “most accurate” way to complete it.

There are those who go the neuroscience

route, using fMRIs, eye tracking, and other

physiological measurements to capture how

subjects are feeling. On the other hand, there

are those who don’t go deep enough, simply

ranking a respondent’s feedback as positive

or negative, with no attempt to delve further

into the wide range of emotions encompassed

within the pleasant and unpleasant category.

Analyzing language gives scientific

accuracy, with an efficient and scalable

research process. Many approaches to

linguistic emotion-analysis exist, but we have

found the most success with tools that

approach emotion research through the lens

of Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions.

The basis of Plutchik’s Wheel is to pare down

the vast number of emotions into a smaller,

more manageable set of emotion “channels”

that focus on what type of emotion is present,

which allows for a simpler conceptualization of

human feelings.

Scientific Emotion Research

The basis of

Plutchik’s

Wheel is to

pare down

the vast

number of

emotions

into a

smaller,

more

manageable

set of

emotion

“channels”

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Our Emotion Wheel

Using a dictionary of over 10,000 emotion words, we’ve developed a patented algorithm that organizes emotion words into a simple framework based upon Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. On the left below, you’ll see Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotion channels. The right image is the analytical framework Martec has adapted for use in discovering and mapping customer emotions.

In both images, each emotion “channel” is representative of a specific type of emotion defined by four main channel properties:

- Enjoyment

- Interest

- Commitment

- Passion

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The third property is Commitment: whether the person feels like being active or passive. Some emotions, such as Joy, are active in nature, meaning the person feels like doing something (e.g. telling a friend, celebrating, etc.). Other emotions, such as Serenity, are passive and result in a desire to do “nothing” (e.g. relaxing on a beach). Understanding whether your customers are feeling active or passive is essential if you want to motivate them to action…you need to understand their emotional starting point.

The first property is Enjoyment: is an emotion is unpleasant or pleasant? This is a fairly obvious element and the base level for sentiment analysis. While a good starting point, enjoyment is all too often where companies stop in their emotion analysis. Just understanding whether an emotion is pleasant or unpleasant is important, but insufficient to really drive actionable outcomes.

The next property is Interest: is the person feeling inward (about “me”) emotions or outward (about what is outside/my environment) emotions. This property is crucial if you want to effectively communicate with your customers or target audience. If your customers are feeling emotions that are predominantly about themselves (inward) and your communications are focusing on your product/brand only (outward), your message may not be truly heard.

Finally, the last property is Passion: how “strong” is the emotion. Saying that “not all emotions are created equal” seems obvious but knowing how strong various emotions are can be tricky. Plutchik’s Wheel provides an excellent guidepost for determining which emotions are stronger and therefore of higher priority to address/leverage.

ENJOYMENT

Unpleasant → Pleasant

COMMITMENT

Passive → Active

INTEREST

Inward → Outward

PASSION

Mild → Intense

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Our Emotion Wheel

Combining these 4 properties produces a simple-to-understand framework (matrix) of 32 emotion channels, grouped into eight channel groups which manifests into an Emotion Landscape. The Emotion Landscape identifies the most prominent emotions for given topic(s) and provides a starting point for further analyses, digging into key emotion channels and beginning to understand how to better connect and communicate with target audiences or customers.

The result is that you don’t need to understand how to “deal with” 10,000 emotions…you simply need to understand the degree to which specific types of emotions are being felt and then, by working with the associated primary properties of those emotions, you can identify the optimal and appropriate actions.

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To learn more about how we approach the study of emotions, download our brief on Emotion Intelligence here or look at a practical application of emotion research in our study of Quick-Service Restaurants. If you’re interested in getting started on emotion research, feel free to reach out to us by email or phone.

More Information

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CONTACTFor a free trial of our Emotion Intelligence tools.

Email us at tmginfo@martecgroup.com or call us at 888.811.5755.

Learn more